As one wag put it, stopping the members of the regime from shopping in Harrods or the Champs Elysee is not going to have much impact.

The thing which will assist is a no-fly zone as happened in Bosnia-Herzegovina. It might also assist in stopping worrying reports that military advice is being provided to Gaddafi and mercenaries are being flown even now in from Algeria.

It would be better to take decisive action now to halt the bloodbath as the Secretary General is calling for, but it is Libya’s Arab neighbors who are in the strongest position to influence things; but of course they are pretty unstable at the moment as well.